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mskfb's avatar

I'm a medical resident in Canada. I'm not sure that I remember specific instruction in medical school on how to talk with or about patients who are very sick or near death, at least until starting my palliative care rotation 3 weeks ago. For this reason, this rotation has been an instructive and helpful experience. However, it's been complicated by the fact that Canada has, in the past 5 years or so, liberalized its laws regarding euthanasia to an extent that truly beggars belief. It's strange to be currently working in a discipline (palliative care) that, from its origins, has been bravely and humanely committed to extending personhood and respect to all people, regardless of level of function or disease, while simultaneously being expected to act like it's a normal and good thing for people to be classified by legislation and physician assessment into a group deserving suicide prevention, and a group whose condition is such that suicide assistance is seen as a good idea. So many of my patients are driven to consideration of euthanasia by worry about "being a burden". In this cultural and legislative environment, the "dignity of dependence" really is such foreign vocabulary. Instead, we have "Dying With Dignity", a group committed to universalizing and enshrining in law the fears and prejudices of the rich, able and educated (don't even get me started!).

During medical school, we did have a fair amount of teaching during our "professionalism" classes (which were so well-intentioned, but bland, milquetoast, lowest-common-denominator stuff - but that's a rant for another time!) where we were told to refer to our patients by name, rather than room number, and to use 'person-first language': ie "a 62-year-old man with diabetes" rather than "a 62-year-old diabetic". This was useful, as far as it goes, but that's just it: it doesn't go very far. Because of the inability to assume any substantive shared moral commitments, we were fed a sort of thin, watery moral gruel, which was unable to really open our eyes to the true value and dignity of all people, (visibly) dependent and suffering or not. You can call someone a "person with diabetes" rather than a "diabetic" all you want (and more power to you!), but if you go ahead and offer them medically sanctioned suicide, you are saying that their life and other lives like them are, in your professional judgement, not worth preserving.

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Lauren O's avatar

I recently had a very positive experience around this topic. We had our first ever miscarriage last month. I reached out to our deacon to celebrate a funeral rite for an unbaptized child. He told me he would be honored and asked if we had chosen a name and if we knew the baby’s sex. My napro doctor, who had been monitoring my hormones, called me to offer her condolences. I hadn’t seen my secular midwives yet, since it was so early, and I ended up being grateful I only had to interact with them over the phone, having heard stories like yours in the past.

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